Mbeki, who was interviewed by Trust Matsilele for CNBC Africa, characterised South Africa as “a bomb waiting to explode, all it needs is a little match to spark it and it will go up in flames”. He said that the country was moving towards an “Arab Spring” type uprising because of the shortage of opportunities and useful employment, particularly for the youth.

Mbeki also commented that military reactions against protesters are fruitless; only employment will curb young people’s restless frustration.

In the podcast, Mbeki speaks about the links between the Chinese economy and the South African economy, and why the dip in the Chinese currency affected this country.

Mbeki says there is a problem in the economic relations between the two countries. Because South Africa sells a large amount of minerals to China, a shrinkage in that country’s demand has a dramatic effect on employment and development here. South Africa should have focused on diversifying its economic product in the past 21 years to avoid a situation of dependency.

Victor Kgomoeswana, author of Africa Is Open For Business, recently wrote an open letter for The Sunday Independent apostrophising Steve Biko, the great Black Consciousness leader who died in police custody nearly 40 years ago.

In the letter Kgomoeswana, says that he wishes Biko, who is the subject of Biko Lives!: Contesting the Legacies of Steve Biko edited by Andile Mngxitama, Amanda Alexander and Nigel Gibson, had been born later so that he could “help us sort our economic transformation enigma”.

Among the issues Kgomoeswana discusses is the hesitance to “buy black” and the frustrations faced by the Black Business Council is achieving real and effective economic transformation. Kgomoeswana says in this regard and in the country’s tendency to cast blame instead of adopting self-reliance, South Africans need to be rediscover the heart of Biko’s Frank Talk campaign.

I promise this is the last time I call on you, at least this Heritage Month, lest I am guilty of taking your name in vain; but I need a one-on-one chat with you, straight up.

Everybody needs an uncle in higher places. You and Amilcar Cabral are the two uncles of relevance in September. He was born in 1924 on September 12, the day on which you were assassinated in 1977. Just like you, Uncle Amilcar – who is credited with the liberation struggles of two countries, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde – had been assassinated for his incisive revolutionary thinking by those driven by fear and hate.

Mngxitama, who is the Economic Freedom Fighters commissar for land and agrarian revolution, believes the historical – and contemporary – rhetoric used to excuse or explain away land dispossession should be challenged. He believes the loss of land affected African people on many other levels: “When we lost our land, it was part of the trajectory of the irreparable loss inaugurated by slavery.”

When one loses a lover, it’s not so much the loss of this beloved person, but a loss of ones capacity to love without fear again in the future. One grieves for not only the past, but also a future that is so linked with the present in ways that already are too damaging. A charred future? Without understanding the dialectical relationship between history and the future we end up being unconscious agents of a history we wish to obliterate. We have to plumb the heart and soul of history, crack open the narratives and data that organise our contemporary agonies and desires.

Moeletsi Mbeki, political analyst and editor of Advocates for Change, spoke to The Times yesterday as the votes from South Africa’s 2014 general election are counted, revealing the ANC’s continued majority hold.

“The average ANC voter is not in a position to choose between corrupt or not corrupt. Poor people don’t want to take that risk of voting for someone else because they don’t have other options for a livelihood,” Mbeki said, when asked about the impact of the Nkandla scandal on people’s decision of whether or not to vote for the ANC.

Political analyst Moeletsi Mbeki attributed the ANC’s continued dominance to the large number of unemployed people in its ranks.

”In 2009, Markinor [now Ipsos] did an extensive survey of who voted for the ANC and who voted for the DA in the previous national elections. They found that 70% of ANC voters did not have a job and had not finished high school.

In a recent opinion piece for the Mail & Guardian Andile Mngxitama, co-editor of Biko Lives!, asks “how we can decolonise our societies and liberate ourselves from all forms of oppression, including on the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender and Intersexed Community (LGBTI) issue”.

“This concern is no longer a marginal one because often the LGBTI struggle is hijacked by pro-colonial white supremacists. This is so primarily because the LGBTI struggle lacks a thorough anti-colonial ideological framework,” Mngxitama writes.

Celebrations of Zanu-PF’s massive parliamentary and presidential victory have been marred by homophobia within the most revolutionary party in Zimbabwe. This presents us with the question of how we can decolonise our societies and liberate ourselves from all forms of oppression, including on the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender and Intersexed Community (LGBTI) issue.

This concern is no longer a marginal one because often the LGBTI struggle is hijacked by pro-colonial white supremacists. This is so primarily because the LGBTI struggle lacks a thorough anti-colonial ideological framework.

Moeletsi Mbeki believes “there is a great deal of exaggeration about China’s relations with African countries”. On Redi Tlhabi’s talk show, South2North, on Al Jazeera, Mbeki discussed foreign aid, saying that he feels it is the regulation of the African countries that is problematic, rather than China itself being the problem.

In his latest column, Jonathan Jansen responds to the claims made by Pieter Mulder, Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, who caused an uproar when he said that black people have no claims to large tracts of land in South Africa, because “whites got there first”.

Jansen, author of Great South African Teachers, criticises Mulder for his use of the word “Bantu” and his insensitivity to the history of land ownership in South Africa:

When Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Deputy Minister Pieter Mulder last week made the claim in parliament that blacks had no legitimate claim to large tracts of land in South Africa because whites got there ahead of them, he pressed all the right buttons of the black elite.

A seething President Jacob Zuma could hardly contain himself, nor could a sizeable number of media talking heads, as they choked on their cereal the next morning.

Mulder got what he wanted – a momentary place in the spotlight for an insignificant right-wing outfit in the country.